Moths & Butterflies Tour

Kondor EcoLodge, Kiskunság National Park, Hungary - 7 days, but can be tailor-made

The total number of recorded Lepidoptera in Hungary is close to 4000 species. Compared to the size of the country it is a huge number, due to a big variety of habitats and microclimates.

Our region, the Kiskunság National Park is famous to have the Westernmost Asiatic steppes in Europe, plus arid, sandy areas dotted with fishponds, alkaline lakes and oxbow lakes with riverine forests. As a result we have a very interesting mix of different habitats thus plenty of interesting species. From May till September almost every week we can have different species of moth at and around our Kondor EcoLodge. For several years we have not used professional moth traps, because in our area there is very limited light pollution, so generally it was enough to use outside special lightbulbs and the white walls of any of our buildings. We had amazing variety of species even with this method.

Nowadays we use a professional Robinson moth trap to catch & observe moth species in our garden. Actually the very first time we run the moth trap we caught 6 different Hawk Moth species plus many other interesting moth species, lot of them extreme rarities in UK or do not even occur, so many of them do not even have an English name such as our local endemic species.

Many thanks especially for Colin Williams who brought over from UK the Robinson Moth trap and helped us to learn not just how to use it successfully, but also to try to ID the the various moth species during the first evening sessions.

Please note that collecting or taking living specimens of any stage is strictly prohibited by the Hungarian law. We will provide literature about Hungarian and Central-European Macrolepidoptera fauna as well as a few special books on Micro moths, although most of them are written in German or Hungarian.

The following list is just a short list of species we have trapped during end of May, beginning of June. But each month, well, actually quite regularly every week has its own special list, so from April till October there are always a lot to look for.